Plethora cheat
doing the reptile dance up there, you ask? Don't tell me you are the only KC player in the world who never tried this.]] The Plethora cheat is the one and only genuine cheat in Kid Chameleon: a secret key combination to be pressed in a certain spot in one of the first levels that will make the player skip all levels to the last one, Plethora, and fight the final boss, Heady Metal. The Plethora cheat is known to crash some PAL systems, emulators, and official re-releases, freezing the game just after completing the cheat. OK, define 'cheat' The vastness of Kid Chameleon's virtual playground, plus the absence of a save or password system, helped to create a legend about the difficulty of the game; however, there are some hidden features in the game which do not make it easier, but they do help make the experience a little more pleasant without any expense of challenge. These are all basically shortcuts: secrets that help the players to skip the levels they have already completed a bajillion times and save energies and enthusiasm for more challenging ones. These secrets are bridges, the 100,000 points trip and the Plethora cheat. Unfortunately, the latter is the only one widely known. Only the Plethora cheat can be considered cheating. This is because the shortcut is highly irregular, in the way that it uses a very obscure feature of the game. The 100,000 points trip is an exceptional feature of the game too, but unlike a 'cheat', it can be triggered accidentally. The Plethora cheat requires the player to access a very specific area of a map and press an odd button combination that causes no effect anywhere in the rest of the game. No player would do all that unless advised by an external source. Now, tell me how to do it! (Sigh.) OK, start a new game, complete Blue Lake Woods 1 (that's not too much asking, is it?), then reach the end of Blue Lake Woods 2 without touching the flag. Jump on the last prize block above the flag, then hold Down + Right + Jump. You will skip one hundred levels automatically and fight Heady Metal. (Cheater!) Warning! Allowing the screen to scroll down while you duck to activate the cheat will cause a crash on the original console and most ports! Some ports like Sega Smash Pack 2, however, have fixed this bug. A final reflection (boring...) Claiming to have finished Kid Chameleon having resorted to the Plethora cheat is like pretending to have watched Pulp Fiction by seeing only the scenes in the restaurant. Or claiming to have watched the entire ''Star Wars ''Trilogy by sleeping through it. Trivia * The cheat is actually programmed to be the equivalent of touching the flag on The Final Marathon, hence why the speed and path bonuses are identical. ** As an interesting side effect, restarting round on the same frame or the frame after the cheat is activated will start you on The Final Marathon. ** This is also why the game crashes if the screen is allowed to scroll down: The Final Marathon is only one screen high, so you shouldn't be able to scroll the screen while ducking. Activating the cheat while in this state puts the camera out of bounds and hence results in a crash. * Though many cheat guides will tell you to activate it by holding Down + Right + Jump + Special, all you actually need to do is hold Down + Jump at pixel coordinates (2515,95). * The cheat as it currently stands is actually the result of a communication error between programmers. During development, programmers Steve Woita and BichCau Le added a cheat code that would allow players to go straight to the credits screen. Designer Hoyt Ng was unaware of this cheat when he added another level, changing the level counter and making the code activate Plethora's stage instead of the end credits. Category:Secrets